Kooti Papa

"Kooti Papa" means "small baby" in Tamil, and is what Megann is affectionately called wherever we go. When we were thinking of possible names for our soon-to-arrive baby, Ryan really wanted a name that had an Indian origin. I was a bit skeptical because if/when we return to the US, I wanted our child to have a name that wouldn't be considered awkward or "too ethnic" in American culture. We looked at a few Indian baby name websites, and started reading out the names. I called out name after name, until I got to the M's and read, "Mehboobah". Needless to say, we stopped searching Indian websites for names.

So, when she was born we named her Megann Maielle because we loved the name. She wasn't named after anyone (except that we got the idea for her middle name from a Canadian snowboarder who won gold in the Olympics this year), and we didn't choose her name from the significance of the meaning - or at least we thought.

When Megann was a couple weeks old we were talking to one of the Indian teachers here at school, and she said casually, "You know that Maielle is the Tamil word for peacock, right?" We couldn't believe it - not only was it Indian, but it was the name for the national bird of India in the local language of the state where we live!

So, here is a picture of our "kooti papa" with our friend Kingsley - who always calls her "Maielle".